Pam Grier

"I do a movie once every four years and they call it a comeback." -Pam Grier

She was a hit 30 years ago in Foxy Brown and Coffy, and continued to fill theaters in the '90s with Mars Attacks! and Jackie Brown.

SEX APPEAL

This statuesque sizzler is full of sexuality. Pam Grier's sex appeal and body didn't fall into the typical realm of beauty in the later days, but in one member of our panel's opinion, older women (or larger women of any age) still maintain their sexuality when their whole body grows in proportion. And as far as we can tell, there is no potbelly or awkward double chin on Pam.

SUCCESS

Her resume is long, and while it lacks the Oscar winners of a Jodie Foster or Meryl Streep resume, it does include some great flicks in their own right, such as 1973's Coffy and Scream, Blacula, Scream and 1991's Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey.

Pam Grier Biography

Pamela Suzette Grier was born May 26, 1949, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Little baby Grier only got to know her southern town for five years before her father, a mechanic in the Air Force, was transferred along with his family to Swindon, England.

Pam and the rest of the Grier clan traveled around Europe on American Military bases before settling back in Denver, Colorado when Pam was 14.

premed prebeauty

Four years after a self-described "awkward" high school experience, Pam went to Metropolitan State College, where she majored in pre-med. During her college years, she gained enough confidence in her physical beauty (and rightfully so) to enter the Miss Universe Beauty Pageant, which was done more for the possible financial benefits than for any reasons of vanity.

After coming in second runner-up, Pamela went on to enter other beauty pageants, including one where she caught the eye of talent agent Dave Baumgarten, who was looking for black actresses to come to the new liberal Hollywood. A reluctant Grier was goaded on by her mother to jump on the opportunity.

At first Pam didn't find any roles and accepted low paying jobs to tide her over. She finally hit the big time after trying out for B-movie artisan Roger Corman's The Big Doll House (1971) -- the precursor to many straight-to-video "women in chains" or "babes-in-bonds exploitation" flicks -- the film that launched her career.

She also landed roles in the two 1972 sequels, The Big Bird Cage and Black Mama, White Mama (on the set of which she almost died from a tropical disease while filming in the Philippines -- it took her a year to recover).

the exploitation of pam

Despite their lack of any artistic ambition, the series of feminine jailhouse flicks were a success. Black Mama, White Mama introduced her name to the rest of Hollywood and she would become the first lady of Blaxploitation Cinema, which would conquer the theaters throughout the early '70s.

The first of these strong black characters -- which were all a conscious refusion of years of weak cinematic black jesters and servants -- was Coffy who, in the film of the same name, goes on a violent rampage against drug pushers and white power structures.

The film was a huge success in black theaters as well as for feminists of all ethnicities. Soon after, Pam would make an appearance in what seemd like a remake of Coffy, Foxy Brown (1974). From then, the Blaxploitation movement started to go stale and Pam starred in some lesser known films of the genre before they were dead by the mid-'70s.

Pam's career took a less public turn through the '80s with roles in small films and some theater productions. In 1988, her career came to a total halt when she was diagnosed with cancer. She fought the disease to the point of remission over the next few years and re-ignited her career by the '90s.

foxy lady, that jackie brown

Pamela starred in the 1996 film Original Gangstas, which featured other ex-Blaxploitation actors Richard Roundtree and Ron O'Neal. That same year, Pam joined a star-studded cast in Tim Burton's ode to Stanley Kubrick, Mars Attacks! and starred as the title character in Quentin Tarantino's disappointing Jackie Brown in 1997 (apparently, she lost a role in Pulp Fiction, but Tarantino promised her a role in his next feature).

Now in her 50s, Pamela Grier's career is as strong as it ever was, and she's still sexier than any teenybopper on the WB -- and we're not just saying that because she can beat us up.